We’re now approaching the tail-end of 2022 and the Government appears to have much on its plate, including the financial echoes of the 2008 banking crisis, the consequences of shutting the country’s economy for two years, the impact of the conflict in Eastern Europe, sabre-rattling by the USA (both in Europe and Asia), the NHS falling apart, political infighting and having to deal with a new monarch. The Government certainly appears to be too busy to have to bother with Covid anymore and would probably prefer it if it went away – the Covid infection reports that were once published every Thursday are published sporadically, the once daily infection reports have been relegated to a weekly update and the endless TV appearances by a succession of politicians to proclaim on Covid has slowed to a trickle.
Alas, Covid doesn’t care about the Government’s preoccupations and we find ourselves yet again at the start of a Covid wave, with increasing numbers infected and surely non-trivial numbers of hospitalisations to come.
Given that the Government seems to want Covid to go away, perhaps now is a good time to review the history and performance of the Vaccine Surveillance Report produced by UKHSA, the Government’s main infectious disease monitoring agency, and arguably originally intended to declare the pandemic finished 18 months ago.
The first Vaccine Surveillance Report was issued on May 13th 2021, from what was then Public Health England – the name change to the Orwellian-sounding Health Security Agency was yet to come. Way back then the vaccine appeared to have had a positive impact on cases, hospitalisations and deaths – we’d suffered a brutal winter wave of the Kent variant (later renamed Alpha variant, because the World Health Organisation didn’t want to blame the gentle folk of Kent for the emergence of the disease), but as vaccination had progressed to ever higher proportions of the population Covid had seemingly gone away. Some might think that the Vaccine Surveillance Report was produced as an exercise in self-congratulation, promulgating the success of the vaccines at eliminating a plague that had caused immense harm to the countries and populations of the world (mainly as a result of the various non-pharmaceutical interventions that nearly all Western Governments seemed very keen to implement).
That week of May 13th 2021 marked the last time that the U.K. saw new Covid infections below 2,000 a day and Covid deaths in single figures.
Unfortunately, the low in Covid ‘cases’ was short lived – after that first Vaccine Surveillance Report cases started to rise again, slowly at first but by the end of summer 2021 our Government was responding with an increased urgency, first imploring individuals to get vaccinated to build herd immunity, then to protect granny and eventually, when it was clear that the vaccines were not offering any meaningful protection from infection/transmission, to protect the NHS.
Seventeen months after that first Vaccine Surveillance Report from Public Health England we’re in a very different position. Recent Covid infectious waves have exceeded 4 million concurrently infected individuals for the U.K., an infection rate of approximately one in every 16 individuals, and it is likely that we’ll see many more infections again this autumn. Note a couple of aspects to the infection ratio that is sometimes missed:
- Infection rates aren’t the same across the population, and in particular for different age groups. Typically, infection rates in the very old are lower than for young adults and the middle aged – this implies that infection rates in those aged 20-60 will be higher than the rate that applies for the whole population.
- This is a snapshot at one point in time – during the peak of each Covid wave there will be people infected in the early part of the wave that have recovered, and there will likely be as many people again that will be infected before that wave dissipates. I estimate that between the start of June and the end of July this year we saw around 20% of the population infected; I’m sure that this autumn will see similar numbers infected, if not more.
Of course, the rate of hospitalisation and death have fallen to relatively low levels with the arrival of Omicron variant, but it is important to note that the risk of any particular pathogen is the combination of infectiousness and the seriousness of infection – while each individual infection with Omicron variant is far less likely to cause serious disease than earlier variants, the huge infection rates and short interval between infectious waves that we’ve seen so far this year have nevertheless resulted in hospitalisation rates higher than seen last year other than in the January 2021 Alpha variant wave, and death rates comparable with those seen last summer. Sure, we’re hearing lots of reassuring voices saying that these are ‘with not of’ hospitalisations and deaths, but I note that 12 months ago we were still in the age of ‘enthusiastic’ medics attributing many unrelated hospitalisations and deaths to Covid simply because of a recent positive test, rather than the ‘with not of’ hospitalisations being insignificant at that time.
The first UKHSA vaccine surveillance report really only covered three topics:
- A presentation of official estimates of the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines at preventing symptomatic infection, hospitalisation and death. In these early days the vaccines were all thought to be magnificent at preventing Covid infection, which is probably why the Vaccine Surveillance Report existed in the first place.
- Graphs showing the progress of vaccination in the U.K. By May 2021 second doses had only just started to be given, but vaccination rates of the first dose were fairly high (over 80%) in those aged over 50 and rates for those aged 40-50 were catching up. However, only 10% of those aged under 40 had been given a dose of vaccine therefore there was a need to use various official publications to encourage vaccination; the attention of the Government’s various ‘nudge units’ were about to be felt by our population.
- An estimate of the number of hospitalisations and deaths saved by the vaccines. These graphs show the dual magnificence of the vaccines in their ability to reduce hospitalisations and deaths whilst at the same time reducing our spring 2021 Covid outbreak to near zero.
The odd thing about this first Vaccine Surveillance Report is that it contained very little in the way of surveillance of the impact of the vaccine – it was clearly little more than a marketing exercise to promote the vaccines. We would get some actual surveillance data later in the year, in the form of tables of Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths by vaccination status – I suspect that these were incorporated into the Vaccine Surveillance Report because various authority figures believed that the data would support the Government’s position, that is, that the data would have showed the vaccinated to have significant protection from Covid compared with the unvaccinated.
However, as the months went by these real-world data first showed that the protective effect of the vaccines had been removed and, after a few months more, showed much higher Covid infection rates in the vaccinated. Of course, the UKHSA added a section imploring the reader to not even attempt to consider these data at face value, and instead consider only Government-sanctioned official estimates of vaccine effectiveness (which continued to show that the vaccines offered protection from infection). I suppose we must be thankful that someone in the UKHSA had a sense of moral duty, and these data on the real-world impact of the vaccines on infections remained in the Vaccine Surveillance Report until spring 2022, when the ending of free Covid testing finally provided the UKHSA with the excuse for ceasing to offer these data. While the UKHSA sort-of had a point in that there were less data available, it could have continued with infection data from those that continued to regularly test for Covid (primarily healthcare workers), and hospitalisation and mortality data by vaccination status has continued to be gathered – but the UKHSA had decided to end the release of these data and that was that.
The Vaccine Surveillance Reports have, over the weeks and months, given us a wealth of information on how the vaccines have been performing, both in terms of the overt data that they present, but more in terms of the message that the Government wished to push on the population. I’ll go through the various aspects of these data over the next few weeks, starting with perhaps the most important aspect of the vaccines – their effectiveness.
Amanuensis is an ex-academic and senior Government scientist. He blogs at Bartram’s Folly.
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Big respect to the author for speaking up. I’ll bet money that the perv had done it before, probably to his own son, and has most likely done it after the incident described above. He was a paedophile and don’t they say paedos cannot be rehabilitated? It’s not just a passing fancy, get it out of your system and then all deviant impulses disappear. You’re either programmed that way or you aren’t. But back in those days many things went on behind closed doors that were not talked about out in the open, this type of incident being just one example.
Toby, Cooper’s criticism of Raymond Baxter tells us less about Baxter than it does about your would-be molester. I recall Baxter’s authoritative voice introducing ‘Tomorrow’s World’ in the 60s. Added to which he (Baxter) was a decorated Spitfire pilot during the WW2. To be thought a “complete c***” by Cooper was something of a badge of honour.
The BPC.
I’ve asked this question since 2012 and never received an adequate reply.
What is the evidence (excluding allegations) that Jimmy savile committed the crimes he’s accused of?
Yes I’ll get lots of down ticks but, almost certainly, no reply to the actual question.
Maybe they buried all their ( whoever they were/are) dirty washing with Savile
No evidence then?
Savile suffered from mass hysteria as you know.
I see what you did there.
Thanks for the msg BTW..
No evidence then?
Lots of witness statements, plus he was well known by people who knew him and knew of him to be a pervert. It is hard to bring a dead person to trial (I shouldn’t need to say that).
Lots of witness statements that turned out to be false, and “I always knew he was a wrong un (but did nothing)” hearsay allegations by the sort of celebs who on another occasion promoted COVID jabs; perhaps we should believe them about that too. There was a very lengthy and public trawling operation for evidence, with financial incentives from his estate and, for those who went public, from newspaper stories, with no downside for false testimony. The late lawyer Susanne Nundy (the “Anna Raccoon” blogger), who had been a resident at the Duncroft school for girls where the allegations started, took a strong interest in the case and her conclusion was that there was no evidence that was made public that he’d done what he was accused of.
Well I’m confident that either way, had he been alive today, he’d be allowed to keep his bank account.
And remarkably, although the allegations ran into the hundreds, not a single documented police complaint made at the time,
I was sexually abused, by a teacher at a Catholic school, I never complained to the police. So I understand why there was “not a single documented police complaint made at the time”, and you don’t. It was a very different time.
No evidence then?
The evidence is documented in “‘Giving Victims a Voice’ A joint MPS and NSPCC report into allegations of sexual abuse made against Jimmy Savile under Operation Yewtree”
https://library.nspcc.org.uk/HeritageScripts/Hapi.dll/filetransfer/2013GivingVictimsAVoiceSexualAllegationsMadeAgainstJimmySavile.pdf?filename=CC18C70DB7C8C3D49403BB94EB176F95207E5F66235DCA89651F5ED2BA5DA9311A3547010EB1745F9098C8189E66B54F16BBCA4419250DDAE584462476E362622BD259A20D1597309210AC995C99F449C7702D4CF7627CBCEC72291068BFEAFDDC8C9625B71658F22EAD1E815FED12FF6D0DEB5CDBB40AEA4EF5D058E57168353BEB2DA3730B57DF729865CC3271FEE73BB1D434AB645BB5&DataSetName=LIVEDATA
If you think more than 400 people, who don’t know each, making the same type of detailed serious allegations isn’t “evidence” because they could all be lying, then you need to explain why you don’t believe any of them and explain what you would regard as “evidence” for any sexual crimes.
“…more than 400 people, who don’t know each other,”!
I would regard correspondence, video, audio, photographic, forensic evidence, confession, police complaints at the time as evidence.
There is nothing for Jimmy saville.
Toby, well done for putting this on the recors.
What I have found amazing is how meny in the MSM and politics behave like that but are never reported. Why do they congregate there.
In all my year sin business at senior managerial level I only once ever had a similar situation. It eas a 3 something woman trying it on with a 20 year old woman whose mother called in to complain.
Wow, the BBC sure seems to be a really big magnet for creeps and nonces! You may recall one Jimmy Saville, for example.
I wonder if the reason his own son didn’t want to go on holiday to Skye was about a great deal more than boredom?
A very evocative account of the attitudes of the time. I was 14 in 1966, so a bit older, and fortunately do not recall a similar incident but I do remember the lack of questioning of motive, as well as the automatic deference to authority. A lot of people had the capacity to keep secrets, good and bad.
Fascinating story and glad you managed to avoid full-on sexual abuse by the sounds of it. I imagine many people can recount experiences of inappropriate behaviour if not full-on sexual abuse during that era. It does seem prominent people who one might describe as “larger than life” are prone to getting carried away (to use a polite term for such perverts) and taking advantage of vulnerable or impressionable youngsters. I’m not making excuses, just observations and I take the point make by a fellow commentator that evidence of Jimmy Saville’s abuses is thin on the ground. I wonder if anything has changed nowadays. It maybe that would-be abusers are more aware that they may get exposed if not brought to justice.
I also had this instinct to stay silent when similar things happened to me as a 16-17 year old – being driven back from a babysitting assignment or given a lift back to a campsite. I struggled and ran too, suffering little more than ruffled feathers – though it does, as you note, stick in the memory.
It is worth pondering this instinct to stay shtum. I suspect it is an evolutionary adaptation – better survival rates for those who did not tell tales on powerful people. When Trump famously observed that ‘it was amazing what you got away with once you were perceived as rich and powerful,’ I felt he was expressing honest surprise at his happy discovery as much as simply boasting. Better appreciation of this mechanism should help us stamp out the unacceptable exploitation of the young and powerless.
How many avuncular figures turned out to have WHT (wandering Hand Trouble) after drinking? Many women remember being groped by such men when they were young. It was such a surprise/shock (the switch from avuncular to groper) that you didn’t know what to do apart from try to distance yourself from them and keep your distance thereafter.
Groping is a strange thing – being groped so unpleasant, what do the gropers think they are doing apart from hurting their victim? It surely is a power thing.